AFP, Beirut Friday A Lebanese military court on Friday charged 18 people, most of them Syrians, with transferring more than $19 million from Lebanon to the ISIS, a judicial source said. Fifteen Syrians, one Palestinian and two others were accused of “belonging to Daesh (ISIS), creating a money smuggling network and transferring money out of […]

by sputniknews.com Lebanese women seek greater participation in the country’s political life as high-ranking government officials are discussing the possibility of creating a quota for women in Lebanon’s parliament. Both the president and the prime minister of Lebanon have recently broached the possibility of instituting a quota for women in parliament. Inaya Azzeddin, Lebanon’s State Minister for Administrative Development and […]

by The Daily Star BEIRUT: Billionaire Lebanese businessman Fouad Makhzoumi has been linked to French presidential candidate Francois Fillon, raising questions about a conflict of interest, French media reported. Online investigative and opinion journal Mediapart revealed Tuesday that Makhzoumi is a client of the scandal-hit French right-leaning politician, and the billionaire’s company 2F Conseil signed […]

Embed from Getty Images SourceNaharnet , President Michel Aoun held a closed meeting on Thursday in the Vatican with Pope Francis after which the Pope announced that he plans to visit Lebanon pointing out that he always raises prayers for the country. After the meeting, Aoun said: “Lebanon has a special part in the heart […]

Joseph A. Kechichian, Senior Writer – Gulf News Beirut: Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) chief and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gibran Bassil introduced the 75th version of a new electoral law that, to say the least, appeased some and upset others. In this latest confabulation, Bassil called for electing 64 deputies (out of 128) according to […]

by Ari Akkermans –  hyperallergic.com

Recognition came later in life to Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese
artist working from Beirut, in relative isolation, throughout the second
half of the 20th century. Her first international debut — several
decades after a number of gallery exhibitions in Paris during the
post-war period — was a major retrospective
held at Tate Modern in 2013, after curators from Tate discovered her
work in a gallery in Lebanon. Choucair was 97 years old at the time.
(She stopped producing art sometime in the 1990s, after five decades of
work.) In the summer of 2016, the recently reopened Sursock Museum in
Beirut celebrated Choucair’s 100th birthday,
and in January 2017, the artist passed away peacefully in her Beirut
home. A number of obituaries highlighting her achievements appeared in
the Western press.

Her life’s work was kept almost intact in her apartment in the
Kantari neighborhood of Beirut, having only rarely been sold. In recent
years, a number of her seldom discussed sculptures — modular structures
formed in calculated, irregular shapes ­— have found their way to
Western institutions, but as far as reception is concerned, Choucair is
still a rather obscure footnote. Most reviews are confined to some
superficial observations on her paintings, and the sculptures, albeit
mentioned, are nowhere offered any serious treatment.

This situation hardly comes as a surprise. A number of artists,
particularly those from the post-colonial world, who have been
discovered and rediscovered by curators in recent years, have shared the
same fate: discovery followed by institutionalization and then, if not
oblivion, a suspended state. In this state, curators cannot decide
whether the artist should be shown as part of the Western canon, or in
carefully labeled ethnographic boxes such as “Islamic art,” “women
artists,” or “modernism” — the last which is a category that today seems
to cover almost an entire century when applied to art produced outside
of the West.

by dailystar.com.lb

This week promises to be crucial
with regard to Lebanon’s Cabinet’s endorsement of the 2017 draft budget
and the launching of legislative Parliament sessions to debate and
ratify a host of draft laws, including the public sector’s controversial
salary hike bill that has been listed on the agenda. Meanwhile, Foreign
Minister Gebran Bassil has said his Free Patriotic Movement would
unveil a new initiative Monday aimed at breaking the monthslong deadlock
over a new electoral law to replace the disputed 1960 majoritarian
system, amid uncertainty on whether the FPM leader’s latest hybrid vote
proposal would be accepted by all the parties. “Hopefully,
the Cabinet will wrap up its discussions on the draft budget tomorrow
[Monday] and finally endorse the fiscal plan before sending it to
Parliament,” Youth and Sports Minister Mohammad Fneish told The Daily
Star Sunday.

by Martin Jayia  Sputnik news – The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of khazen.org

In the last few days, both Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement exchanged threats, reviving the specter of another Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Even the Western mainstream media admits the root cause of the tension could be Mr. Trump’s threats to garbage the nuclear agreement with Iran, Hezbollah’s longtime supporter.  No one could take the ensuing threats more seriously than the people
in Lebanon. Lebanon has faced war so many times that the people here
regard the black dog almost as an old friend, such is their despondency
when faced with it once again. After the official end of the civil war
in 1989, Lebanon survived several bombing campaigns by Israel (the
biggest one in 2006, which decimated the country’s infrastructure
for years to come). Now Lebanon is home to 1.5 million refugees
from neighboring Syria, becoming the most densely populated “refugees’
safe haven” in the world.

Hezbollah’s Attraction: Natural in Lebanon, Fatal in the US

In this situation, it is natural that the militant group Hezbollah,
which was born as a response to the Israeli occupation in 1982 and which
helps the Syrian government to fend off the Islamic State’s extremists –
it is natural that this group enjoys some popularity in Lebanon.
Hezbollah also has a strong faction in the Lebanese parliament, and the
group’s charity work is visible everywhere.

Unfortunately, it is not visible to the
American government which continues to view Hezbollah through the prism
of hostility, as if Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah continued
to shout ‘Death to Americans!” – despite these slogans having been
dropped by Hezbollah decades ago.  

By Nicholas Blanford – BEIRUT – Article represents view of Author

Recent visits by US civilian and military officials to
Beirut come amid con­cerns that the adminis­tration of US President
Donald Trump could reduce fi­nancial assistance to the Lebanese Army,
which is playing a vital role in defending Lebanon against the Islamic
State (ISIS) and other ex­tremist groups. Lebanese
President Michel Aoun caused a diplomatic and political stir in February
when he said the militant Shia Hezbollah, Iran’s most prized proxy
force, was a “comple­ment” to the Lebanese Army in helping defend the
tiny Mediterra­nean country against Israeli aggres­sion.

Aoun’s
comments raised ques­tions in the United States about the continued
funding of a military that is said to collude with what Wash­ington
classifies as a “terrorist” or­ganisation.“Lebanon’s
new president is le­gitimising Hezbollah’s military role, which is
independent of control by the Lebanese state,” wrote Elliott Abrams,
senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council for For­eign
Relations and former US depu­ty national security adviser. “If
it is true that LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces)-Hezbollah coopera­tion is
increasing, the United States should demand that the trend be halted and
reversed,” he wrote.

Aoun’s comments also earned a
retort from the top UN diplomat in Lebanon who said Hezbollah was
required to disarm under UN Secu­rity Council resolutions rather than
serve as a defence force for Leba­non. Saudi King
Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was also reported to have postponed a
planned visit to Beirut to protest the comments by Aoun, a Christian who
was backed by Hez­bollah to become president. Saudi Arabia is one of several Arab countries that classify Hezbol­lah as a “terrorist” organisation.

In
February, US Army General Joseph Votel, the head of the US military’s
Central Command, vis­ited Beirut to discuss the military assistance
programme and the war against ISIS. Several hundred
militants from ISIS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, considered an al-Qaeda
affiliate, are holed up in barren mountains near the town of Arsal in
Lebanon’s north-eastern corner adjacent to the Syrian border.